More ideas on how to put the summer days to good use.

Inside track

When travelling to a warmer climate adapt your make-up by using a slightly darker foundation than your original tone. Try to have a light fluid foundation with you along with a bronzing lotion. This will give you a more natural look for your holiday. The last thing you will want is to have something heavy on your skin when you're in a warmer climate.

Bronwyn Conroy, The Bronwyn Conroy Beauty School

Cool for kids

Galway Atlantaquaria, at the National Aquarium in Salthill, presents the world of water through displays and live presentations, letting people learn about Irish aquatic life in its natural habitat. Day programmes are available on topics such as basic shoreline ecology and animal adaptation - what lives where and why. For further details contact the National Aquarium on 091-585100.

Louise Holden

Watch out

A humid summer offers some compensation in mushrooms on grassland yet to be "improved" as they flourish near well-drained, sandy land. Fairy rings are a good indication. Their network of filamentsspread outwards with mushrooms popping up on the circle's rim. The fungus releases nutrients there as it breaks down plant remains.

Michael Viney

Stars and gripes

Stephen Brennan, currently performing in Pygmalion at the Gate theatre, Dublin

Best holiday: Stresa doesn't sound like a relaxing place to stay, but I found that it is. Situated on Lake Maggiore in northern Italy, it's a quite beautiful, unhurried place. Three small lake-islands are only a short ferry trip away, bringing a taste of sight-seeing and good lunches. And . . . the best thing of all - not a hustler in sight.

Worst holiday: Stephen Brennan offers a poem in response: 'A Postcard from Tunisia'

Here I am on north Africa's coast,

Where I thought I'd be burnt up like toast;

But all I have done is sit in the bar,

Watch the rain comin' down as I spend my dinar!

After forkin' out all of that money,

And here I won't try to be funny,

I'm catchin' a cold and it seems strange to me,

If I'd stayed there at home I'd have got one for free.

Today I went to the Medina,

In two seconds flat they could clean ya!

I told them I found it all truly bazaar,

They'd sell their own granny for half a dinar!

And all their cute faces are smiling,

These rascals are awfully beguiling,

But I see what they see, they know what you are,

A lovely big innocent bag of dinar.

Dinar, dinar, dinar,

All I do is shell out Dinar.

It's a wonderful country but you won't go far

Without dinar dinar dinar!

 Off the shelf

Bel Canto by Ann Patchett,

published by Fourth Estate, £6.99 in UK

This book won the Orange Fiction prize in 2002 and is charged with danger, excitement and romance. When hostages are taken at a birthday recital, they discover hidden talents from within their gilded prison. The unlikely pairing of soldiers and dignitaries provides the perfect scene for an opera singer to fall for a quiet businessman as a young soldier finds feelings for an unassuming translator.

Catherine Foley

Get out

Where to go, what to see: For entertainment listings, see The Ticket, every Friday in The Irish Times, or go to www.ireland.com/ theticket

For other events see the What's On column in the main paper every Thursday and the Saturday magazine